I have heard of everything now. I can truly say I have lived a complete life untill i hear of the catch and release habits of some fishermen. I was raised on releasing the fish in a safe manner for the fish, not however to hold it up, take pictures and send it down the river to be netted by a grandson, being that the fish was dead. USE YOUR BRAINS!!!! Why , also, release the fish ? so the indians can harvest more and net more often? Keep 'em boys and enjoy the fishing. If we go to catch and release on the penninsula rivers the indians will say " hey more harvestable fish for us" and they will net more.

Hmmm don't really understant your thoughts on the Indains. The quota's as I understand are based on 50% of the harvestable fish in the system. If it is closed to keeping of fish then it should be closed to there harvest as well. See if you are basing it on the Chehalis system there are still late running hatchery fish that enter it until the Nooch closes and then some. There for they are still targeting those fish or so they say. But really anything that makes it past the nets is our future----Plain and simple

I see in your profile that your interests are fish and girls. Well, catch and release for fish is alot like catch and release for girls. After you have your way with the women[if] do you release them or bonk them?

C&R is fine but I don't think the majortiy of folks on this board understand foregone opportunity and what it means. It means the Indians get their 50 percent and if we don't take our 50 percent they may go to court and fight to take those fish we are not(any thiings over MSY). So before we go to a total C&R I think the coalition needs to have some sort of agreement that the unharvested fish don't end up in the tribal nets in following years!!!!

I belive the numbers of fish is determined on escapement ratios. Not on acutally how many return. It's 50/50 of what the game dept. figure what will return.If the game dept. is wrong emergency closure for us or the fish take it in the shortsand the Indians keep on fishing.

But as some posts have indicated that on the OP with the rivers low the Indians have been just hammering the fish. Bins and bins of fish but the sportys haven't been doing that well because of low clear water. The tribes should keep abreast of what the sports guys are doing. The way it is now the Indians get there projected share and if we don't get ours for what ever reason, tough.

I think the biggest ***** I have is The game department closes the native keep seasons on the sports guys to ensure a good return, but the Indian nets can keep as many as they can catch. Our moneys pay for habitat and biologists but when ever there's a problem they cut our fishing and no one else's. It's just not equal and the ones that are losing are the fish. I hear all the time "If they can keep them why can't I?" espically if they sell them for 1.oo a lb.

I'm not an advocate for C&K at all but something has to be done.

I am a proponent for catch and release, but I believe if the state is made catch and release, the tribes will make up for what the sporties are not catching with extra days netting. The tribes will catch far more in those extra days of netting then sportfishers could ever catch. (this is on the coastal rivers) I hope this doesn't happen, but the tribes have showed their true colors in the past, with other harvests. I guess we will have to see.

BBM,

Apparently you've yet to learn that two wrongs still don't make a right. To argue that because treaty Indians harvest native steelhead, therefore we should also shows all the intelligence of a box of rocks.

Those who are still concerned about foregone opportunity and would use it as a guise for continuing to have a sport harvest of native steelhead could have benefited by attending the last Wild Steelhead Coalition meeting. Both biologist Curt Kreamer and Commissioner Van Gytenbeek (sp) explained that few steelhead and even less recreational fishing opportunity are likely to be lost to the treaty fishery as a result of any foregone opportunity, should the state and recreational anglers choose to utilize their 50% share of the harvestable resource by releasing it to the spawning grounds.

Sincerely,

Salmo g.

Has the Foregone Opportunity issue been tested? It seems to me that foregone opportunity can easily be circumvented, as reported by Salmo g and those at the WSC meeting, by simply claiming the sport 50 percent as fishing "opportunity" as oppose to fishing "harvest". Is there any language that states that foregone opportunity applies if other groups do not "harvest" their share of the fish? After all, it would be cheaper for sporties to "harvest" our fish at QFC. Sporties fish for fishing opportunities, taking one home is gravy, and that's what the hatchery run is for.

Another consideration: If the decision to go State-wide C&R is approved, and the foregone opportunity issue lands against sporties and steelhead (which I do not believe), nothing would keep the state from rescinding C&R and going back to C&K business as usual. Faced with no benefit to sport fishing opportunities, no benefit to wild steelhead, and the possible loss of license sales because of lower fishing opportunities, the state would have every incentive to change the decision. And the exercise, under this scenario, wouldn't look too good for the tribes as far as public opinion goes. The State could say "we tried, but didn't get the expected response from the tribes".

Alternatively, the State could make the decision in a moratorium fashion or some other temporary way to determine what the tribes will do and how the courts will react before making a final decision.

It seems to me like a win win situation, so why not try? I'm letting loose these thoughts because its usually the C&K advocates that push the foregone opportunity issue, its in their best interest. But it seems that some C&R folks also believe we will not gain any wild steelhead in the rivers because of this issue. I do not believe this.


[This message has been edited by obsessed (edited 03-26-2001).]

I'm gonna have to disagree with you here. Once the state makes a regulation, they rarely go back on it. Occasionally they do, but not often enough so that I would trust them to. The salmon runs have been getting stronger over the years and yet sportsman still can't fish at Sekiu during July/August.

forgone opportunity is based on harvest, not opportunity. The court documents are very specific on that.

JacobF

I agree with you on conservation decisions in marine areas. With ESA and generally fishing mixed stocks destined for several river basins, WDFW is forced to take the weakest link approach--i.e., the basins that need protecting will determine all fishing in a saltwater area.

But emergency regs are issued and lifted all of the time in rivers, where they usually don't have to manage multiple stocks. And tribal response to foregone opportunity would not be a conservation decision, but an allocation decision on so called "healthy" wild runs.

thinker

Details? There seem to be a growing contingent of management and policy folks that feel C&R is the way to go (not just C&R sporties). Why would they think this would be good for the resource if there is no legal wiggle room?

Todd, Salmo,....Any thoughts

ME ME ME ME! Good grief! Most sport fisheries take place at locations upstream of tribal fisheries! Any fish released by a sport fisher is extremely likely to make it to the spawning bed alive! Therefore every fish released increases the productivity of the stream meaning more fish for the future. The fundemental problem is with WDFW because there is not one stream in Washington state that has a harvestable surplus of wild steelhead. 50% of 0=0. We need to get WDFW to acknowledge the face that the rivers can handle more fish. I'd say we need to drop harvest to 10% of the so called surplus combimed. 5% for sport
5% for tribal. but even thats a stupid management strategy because there is no harvestable surplus! Anyone who intentionally kills a wild steelhead by their own actions demonstrated their greed. There are 10's of thousands of hatchery fish to bonk. Noone for any reason needs or should want to kill wild fish.

Obsessed, I can only offer theory on that.

My best guess is that presently C&R is only hope for wild steelhead fisheries at all. In most places there is no risk of a forgone opportunity issue because they are lucky if they even make escapement goals. Thats why you never even hear it brought up except on the peninsula.

Alot of it is the politics of it. When you have very few fish state wide, the only people fishing are the dedicated anglers. The majority of the dedicated steelhead anglers want to fish regardless if you can keep them or not so you see a large C&R push. Now if the runs were to recover, you would see many more of the less dedicated get back into angling again. The less dedicated don't care about C&R, they want dinner. Then you would see the percentage of anglers who want kill fisheries go up and with so many fish, it would be tough to justify C&R.

Thats why I agree with most of you that the only real fix is a philosophy change. While I support C&R I realize its only a band-aid fix. It in no way guarentees more fish to the spawning grounds. I can not remember the exact wording from the court documents but I remember that the language specificly said harvest. It was something like "if one party is unable to harvest their half of the fish, the other party may choose to harvest them". The other part of the rulings that was interesting was the part specificly talking about how the tribal share could be seasonal. The judge (I think it was still Boldt at this point) even went so far to recomend that the tribes take their half from the winter run and leave the summer mostly alone (where applicable). I am not sure of his reasoning on that though, except that more anglers would rather fish when its warm out.

The bottom line is that the only way to change the ruling is to back to court (much $$$, and no guarentee) or loby US congress. An act of congress is an automatic treaty modification.

Thinker,what do you mean by an act of congress is an automatic treaty modification? I don't think congress can modify a treaty,unless all parties agree to the changes, once it becomes law.I would love to be wrong on this one,but...

look as the Endangered Species act as an example, the tribes are not exempt from that, regardless of the treaty. I probably worded that in a way that was confusing. An act of congress does not force them to edit the treaty, but an act passed by congress does have an effect. Even the US supreme court specifies that in the US vs Fishing vessel decison in 1979 (appeal of Boldt).

Also, I must add something here because someone could read into this info the wrong way. I am not looking to use this info to find a way to overturn Boldt or destroy the treaty, but the federal courts have put us in a bind by somewhat locking us into a management philosophy that does not work. This can be changed, but we need to have enough people aligned to make the politicians have a healthy respect for our votes.

[This message has been edited by thinker (edited 03-26-2001).]

I certainly hope you are right about Congress' ability to make changes to the treaty.I am not sure that the ESA is a very good example of that authority,as it can be argued that the ESA doesn't conflict with specified treaty rights.I believe the indians are entitled to a percentage of the available harvest and ESA effects available harvest and not the right to net those fish.

Catch and release is utilization and harvest, altho a bit lite on the harvest. Foregone opportunity applies to unharvested and unutilized resources. C&R very much utilizes the resource. No one is even contesting that. C&R is simply one of many choices among forms that utillzation might take. The state is not without the capability to harvest its full allocation - that is what foregone opportunity is about - though either extensive C&R, a customary C&K fishery, or heck, WDFW could open a season of non-treaty sport gill-netting on coastal rivers deemed to have a harvestable surplus. Foregone opportunity is an over-used scare tactic as applied to potential losses to non-treaty fishing opportunities. I think we ought to worry about the real problems in fisheries and disregard the imaginary ones.

As for treaties, Congress has the power to modify treaties - even without the consent of the tribes. Some original treaties with tribes were modified before being ratified by the Senate, and tribes were stuck with the outcome. Of course, that was the 1800s and early 1900s. For example, the Nisqually Tribe didn't agree to having the U.S. government take half their reservation to create Ft. Lewis, but the gov't. did it. That probably wouldn't happen nowadays.

RobertAllen3, I think you work against your and our interests when you say the problem is with WDFW and that there are no harvestable wild steelhead. I don't know your background and qualifications, but your statement presumes you know what a host of trained and experienced fisheries professionals don't. That approach is only going to work in an environment where those fisheries pros don't have any influence. I don't know where that environment is.

I think there are better approaches. It is more productive to argue against MSY/ MSH harvest models, because it is a FACT that most fish stocks worldwide have collapsed when managed by that model. It is more productive to argue social values; i.e. I value near-maximum conservation of remaining wild steelhead stocks by increasing spawning escapement and recreational C&R fisheries. It is impossible to prove that such a value is wrong. Conversely, we cannot prove that a C&K value is wrong; it isn't wrong, but it works against population conservation if conducted in an MSY/MSH model.

Statewide wild steelhead release will not come about via a biological argument, at least not on biology alone. It will come about as an expression of social values among the angling community. The biological contribution to the argument occurs in the context of ESA threatened and endangered species listings of Columbia and Snake River steelhead stocks. C&R allows substantial fishing opportunity with minimal fish mortality where the alternative would be to severely reduce or eliminate fishing to achieve a necessary conservation objective.

The argument for C&R on the state's most productive coastal rivers is to "improve" the quality of fishing opportunity. The simple fact is that the fish you release today may be the steelhead I cast over tomorrow. C&R results in more fish being in the river on a given day that does C&K, and we will cast our lines over fewer fishless pools as the outcome. It does amaze me that anyone wouldn't prefer that, but as they say, it takes all kinds.

The argument that C&R results in increased steelhead production is without merit when spawning escapement goals are otherwise met. C&R can help meet the escapement goal only if overfishing is the otherwise predictable outcome. C&R has been the dominant management theme for Skagit native steelhead since 1981. The allowable harvest on natives has been 2,000 or less since the late 1980s. The run size peaked at 16,000 in 1986 and has generally been less than 10,000 through the 1990s. There is no indication that spawning escapement was limiting productivity by the early 1980s. The population increased from about 3,000 in the late 1970s to whatever the river system could support, plus the effects of ocean survival. Due to the lack of increased productivity from larger escapements, WDFW agreed with the Skagit tribes to lower the escapement goal from 10,000 to 6,000 spawners. The data simply didn't show increased production from higher numbers of spawners. So whether those steelhead over and above the 6,000 level (wish there were that many this year!) should be subject to harvest or C&R is largely a social, not a biological, issue. One can of course argue that a larger escapement results in better habitat penetration and distribution, improves population diversity, and ecological values such as that, but one cannot effectively argue that it results in increased steelhead production. Because it hasn't.

Sincerely,

Salmo g.

"The pre-season total harvest rate calculated for Hoh wild steelhead was 48.8%. In the last two years, the tribal fishery is targeted to harvest 24.4% and the sport fishery has averaged 12.3%. The balance of the sport opportunity is provided in the wild release sections of the upper river and South Fork."

This is an excert from the response from Bob Leland, Steelhead Program Managger.(From post "Part II.... , on the wild steelhead board) THe logic is used that with more catch and release sport opportunity, balances with the tribes greater catch percentage. With more increased catch and release areas, will this balance with an increased netting schedule? The above logic would say yes.

I would like to see more catch and release, and fish making it to the areas to spawn. But this response, suggests the tribes could argue the balance of fishing opportunity vs. harvest, and net more days a week. At least on the coastal rivers. ....and no this is not a guise for me wanting to continue harvesting wild steelhead. I really believe if the tribes can take it, they will. I feel a non-mandatory policy would prevent this.




[This message has been edited by KORE (edited 03-27-2001).]

Thanks for the response Salmo....

You've correctly pointed out something that always seems counter-intuitive to most of us--that there's not much of a correlation between the run-size of parents and the subsequent run-size of their progeny above a certain threshold. But I can't help but think that with all other things held equal, in a management regime of MSY/MSH, in an arena where there is often not enough data to make prudent fisheries management decisions, and in an arena where politics wields influence, that mandatory C&R would provide the following benefits:

- increase the temporal spread of wild-runs, i.e. increase the number of early-returners (perhaps not on the Skagit because of flows)

- provide some buffer from the effects of overharvest when run-size predictions are overestimated

- Increase genetic diversity and robustness since C&Red fish would readily compete on the spawning grounds (as you already stated)

- Allow more fishing opportunities during periods of poor ocean survival, particularly when these years are strung together

- In general, provide more of a buffer to MSY/MSH, which is chronically proned to overharvest

KORE

Maybe theres the coast and the rest of the steelhead world. I don't know. But I'm not sure if "balance" of harvest opportunities would shift if harvest were defined as Salmo defined it above. And why wouldn't it? If we fished for the table only, it wouldn't be called sport, it would be called subsistence. And it would be cheaper to drive to the grocery. It seems to me that that provides enough legal impetus to define sport harvest as "utilization" and leave the allocation numbers alone.


[This message has been edited by obsessed (edited 03-27-2001).]

Salmo G you are probably right and I am sure you have read enough of my posts in the past to know I pretty much always overstate my opinions. I live here in southwest Washington and watched the wild fish down here basically disapear. Down here our steelhead are not ESA listed . It is said thet they are not presently warrented for listing. That is not because there is an abundance of fish. I am not any type of fisheries expert I just know what I have seen happen here and nopw I see it happening there. WDFW is giving in to harvest interests instead of the fished interests just like they always have. I am just tired of it. The whole concept of allowing harvest on a species in long term decline just seems stupid to me especially when there are so many hatchery fish to kill and eat. WSR regulations went into affect down here in 1985 yet there has been no recovery of wild steelhead. Why? because WDFW waited too long until numbers were so low that recovery is not at all likely here.
It wasn't that long ago that the Washougal was consistantly in the top 5 for steelhead harvest in Washington now it only gets a tiken run of hatchery fish and barely a handful of wild fish. Catch and release has worked for decades on on trout streams and bass lakes across the country yet steelhead anglers insist on killing what they catch so WDFW listens to them and maintains the harvest of these fish based on what I believe are political considerations NOT biological ones. If they were looking out for the fish would not the puget sound streams have been closed earlier? The Sandy river is the most popular river in Oregon for winter steelhead and has a very healthy run of wild fish they were protected by WSR long before their numbers were critically low. It's time to do the same everywhere. As far as I am concerned the ends justify the means on this issue. EVERY wild fish we can get on the spawning bet is a great thing 30001 spawning steelhead is better that 3000. EVERY FISH COUNTS!